Excerpt from a bum's diary, November 5th, 2007

Dear Diary,

It is Monday once more. It was a rather chilly morning and like a couple days in the past, I was able to wear a jacket. Totally sweet. The weather has been rather nice lately, albeit the wintry smog is slowly falling on us. When the temperatures go down, the smog comes. We scarcely see the sun directly anymore, though it does shine through the thick gray mass. I don't mind. As long as it cools down a little, it's all good.

We had a small get-together of friends on Friday evening. A friend of mine (ours) came from China for an evening's stay in Hong Kong, and we gathered to another friend's place in Tung Chung, and had a charming evening. It's been a while since last having this kind of an old-fashioned house party. Of course, it was much more controlled than those when we were younger, but nonetheless, playing music loud, talking, drinking and eating, and generally having a good time are things that always result from such elements.

Saturday we slept late and didn't do anything, on Sunday Chi had to work and I remained home - and didn't do anything. The perfect weekend. Nothing to do, doing nothing.

Anyway,

I've been waiting for one thing to happen, and it happened on Sunday morning as I was watching Discovery Channel. See, it's no secret I have rather controversial thoughts about many things, one being the on-going discussion of climate change.

On Sunday morning, on Discovery Channel, they promised more earthquakes, volcano eruptions and tsunamis - all because of climate change! Hurrah! Now, officially the world is going to hell because of climate change! Good for us.

What a wonderful time we humans have managed to come into existence. We come be and the world is like a paradise, everything is fine and good, everything is in balance. But unbeknown to us, our planet is like a fragile little flower. We live on a thin threshold of sweet paradise surrounded by hell on earth! Deviate one step from this line, and the shit will literally hit the fan.

Well, isn't that all quite quaint.

So, we have the perfect world now. Everything is super-fine! We are super-duper well-off and we have absolutely no problems here what-so-ever ... except those caused by man (like poverty, war, and such).

But here comes the man-caused CLIMATE CHANGE!! In a few hundred years of industrialism we have managed to change our planet to a point that it will warm up a staggering few degrees over the next few hundred years!

And what this few degrees does to our wonderful Eden of a planet? Well, what DOESN'T it cause? If I'm to believe everything that is said by the "scientists" our planet is going to all but blow up. We will have drought, floods, disease, poverty, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, storms, cancer, spaghetti monster, war, volcanic eruptions, shifts in continental plates, mass extinction of species, massive death-tolls on human population, chaos, massive forest fires, lack of food and water, etc.

All this because we get a few degrees more?

Even with the violent reality of the universe - the fact that our planet is more susceptible to things that take place outside this little blue ball of ours, than inside, like the Sun (our main source for warmth and light) - we think us humans are the sole cause of this climate change. Ignoring the fact that the climate changes anyway.

And why is it that all the effects are negative? Or is it just because people are so damned stupid that they always want to see catastrophe? Good news aren't interesting so let's give 'em hell!

And on another note, I'd like to point out that most people care about climate change because of selfish reasons. They don't care about the planet; for some it's a popularity tool (politicians, activists, corporations), for others it's a source of income (politicians, activists, corporations, "scientists"), to some it's a smokescreen (politicians, corporations), and to the general population it's just another hype they have to be concerned about.

For example, from 50's to 90's we had Communism to fear, or other maybe feared Capitalism. In the 80's we were told a new ICE AGE is coming, but now nobody seems to care or worry about that anymore. In 2000 we had Y2K which was said to literally end our contemporary way of life. And after 2001 we had Terrorism and now we have Climate Change. It's all very nice. There are others but these are the best known and the first that came to my mind.

Haha, seems I went a bit further on the topic than I intended... My original point was this: tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are now going to increase because of Climate Change. Our planet's temperature increasing by few degrees will, in fact, affect how the continental plates shift!!! Imagine that. All this over a few degrees Celsius. How delicious.

I suppose I need to go eat lunch now. I try not to worry too much about my carbon-footprint while I eat - I'm sure I could stop climate change if I tried harder. But for some reason, I just don't see it happening.

Maybe when I'm 50 years old and the whole world's gone to hell, I'll regret these words I've said. But with my unlimited humane feelings towards the ever-so-great human race, I can't say I feel sorry for anyone - except maybe my close family and friends. Whatever comes, comes for a reason. And if indeed humankind has CHANGED THE CLIMATE, we can all pat ourselves on the back and I can say to everyone's relief: "gosh, we do hold some super-human powers after all. I can't believe Gore was right... though he did receive the Nobel PEACE price and everything for his struggle for.... peace, so I suppose he actually knew what he was talking about in the end. I suppose I owe you all an apology for being so blind."

HA! Lunch-time.

EDIT: After lunch... I must add that I am all for environmental protection and that pollution should be decreased. I'm just starting to get pissed off at the never-ending discussion of climate change. If the climate changes we need to adapt to it!! We can't control the climate - that we could is the stupidest thing I've heard in a while. What we need to do is decrease pollution and improve our waste-management systems to clean our earth. And realize, that even if we stop every polluting activity, and hug trees, and sing songs by a camp fire, and take responsibility over our actions towards nature, THE CLIMATE WILL STILL CHANGE! It does that all the time, status quo never remains, and the climate is always changing. Period. End of story. The End.